1. Field of Disclosed Subject Matter
This disclosure relates to systems and methods for applying raised markings on documents, particularly paper currency, to provide enhanced security for the documents and to provide recognition of the documents for the visually impaired, without adversely impacting automated document handling of the documents.
2. Related Art
The U.S. Government, like other governments world-wide, prints “paper” currency for use in domestic and international trade and transactions. Paper currency, like many other forms of printed documents that have an intrinsic monetary value (“documents of value”), is historically a target of forgers or counterfeiters. The forgers or counterfeiters painstakingly produce or reproduce copies of the documents of value and then attempt to pass the forgeries off as original and genuine documents of value.
The existence and use of counterfeit currency can have economically devastating effects. Because of this, governments expend significant resources to make forgery and counterfeiting of currency incredibly difficult. Historically, efforts to counter forgery or counterfeiting of currency and other documents of value often involved the inclusion of increasingly sophisticated fine details in the printing of the currency or other documents. These fine details were designed in a manner that they were not easily reproducible according to traditional document production or reproduction printing methods. An objective of anti-forgery and anti-counterfeiting methods and techniques was to include printed details in the produced documents of value that were easily recognizable such that the absence of these printed details could be readily detected by simple visual inspection of the documents of value by virtually any observer on careful inspection of the documents of value.
The widespread availability of all manner of increasingly sophisticated image forming devices, such as printers and copiers, which are capable of producing and reproducing extremely high quality color copies of original authentic documents, has rendered obsolete many of the more simplistic, traditional anti-forgery or anti-counterfeiting methods and techniques. Digital printers, copiers and scanners, coupled with sophisticated image editing software, make it possible to produce unauthorized high-quality copies of legitimate documents of value, including currency, that are increasingly difficult to distinguish from genuine original documents. In other words, developments made in computer and photocopying technologies have made it possible for individuals with very little training, and comparatively little effort, to easily copy documents of value, including currency. The quality of these unauthorized imitations, in many instances, makes them all but impossible to distinguish from genuine documents, when the only features that may be used to distinguish the copies from the originals are the content of the printed image.
Government agencies and corporate entities responsible for the generation and control of all manner of documents of value, including currency, combat increasingly sophisticated counterfeiting techniques by employing equally increasingly sophisticated marking methods that remain directed at the objective of including details in the printed documents the absence of which may be easily detected. Among the techniques that have been implemented are the use of increasingly sophisticated graphic designs, holograms, multiple and unique color schemes and shading, watermarking strips embedded in document substrates, other embedded identification devices, micro-printing techniques and inks that appear to the visual inspector to change color depending on an angle at which ambient light is reflected off the surface of the document.
This game of cat and mouse continues. Counterfeiters and forgers continue to seek new and unique ways of stymieing all efforts to stop them. In an effort to avoid the inclusion of embedded watermarks, for example, in the substrates on which U.S. currency is printed, counterfeiters and forgers have been known to apply a deinking process, for example, to five dollar bills and to reprint them with the markings of hundred dollar bills in order to attempt to pass the counterfeits off as genuine hundred dollar bills. A quick visual inspection may reveal the embedded watermarking strip without the inspector recognizing that the displayed the denomination on the face of the currency and the information presented on the embedded watermarking strip do not match.
In ongoing efforts to stifle forging and counterfeiting, some countries have turned to the use of, for example, advanced printing and security techniques in the form of polymer banknotes. Introduced first in Australia in the late 1980s, it is estimated that more than 25 countries worldwide employ such polymer banknotes. Canada, in 2011, began issuing polymer banknotes that include detailed anti-forgery and anti-counterfeiting features. Among these are certain raised features that, in addition to providing a heightened level of security for the documents, also provide distinguishing “haptic” or “tactilely discernible” characteristics on the surface of the banknotes by which visually impaired individuals can distinguish, for example, different denominations of the banknotes by touch.
While currency represents perhaps the most commonly-understood and commonly used form of value documents that is the target of forgers and counterfeiters based on its widespread circulation and every day use, other examples of documents of value include lottery tickets, travelers checks, and commercial tickets for transportation and leisure activities. A non-exhaustive list of these latter categories of tickets includes airline tickets, cruise tickets, sporting event tickets, concert tickets and tickets for admission to large theme parks. Commercial enterprises that deal with tickets as forms of documents of value seek to apply techniques similar to those employed by governments in protecting their currency to avoid unauthorized copying of their documents of value. Many of these commercial enterprises choose to encode authenticating information as individual barcodes, or glyph elements, for example, either of which may be machine scanned and authenticated at a point of entry or point of embarkation, as appropriate. These enterprises also use authenticating information embedded in a design on the face of the document that is printed in such a manner as to allow the design to catch light differently when the document is tilted, sometimes resulting in a different image being discernible altogether.
The objective of anti-forgery and anti-counterfeiting techniques and methods, regardless of the form they take, remains to provide a simple manner by which to verify the authenticity of a document of value with inclusion of features that may or may not be visually discernible, or are otherwise very difficult to reproduce, in order that an unauthorized reproduction of a document of value can be distinguished from a genuine document.